TheGimp Launcher

An AppleScript application that lets you (almost) drag and drop files to the Gimp.
Finally, open image files in The Gimp straight from the Finder! (OSX Only)

Good news! If you use Mac OSX 10.3 or newer this isn't really needed any more! A clever person has taken both Gimp 1.2 and Gimp 2.0 and has turned them into self-contained packages with a nice wrapper. Check out Gimp.app! I'll leave this up anyway, but Gimp.app is a much better solution.

I quite like Mac OSX. However, I miss some things from Linux. Thankfully, the Fink project is actively porting all the good stuff from the *nix community. With the inclusion of the X11 serverin OS 10.3, I was really hoping that Apple would also find some way to make *nix apps feel a bitmore native in Aqua. The X11 server was a very important first step, but I want drag and drop to work, and I want to be able to associate file types with X11 apps. I was tired of waiting for this, so I finally wrote a small AppleScript program that helps me emulate some of this missing functionality.

The Gimp Launcher accepts standard graphics formats as dropable items. When executed, the launcherchecks to see if it needs to start the X11 server before launching the Gimp. If image files are dragged to the icon, the program tries to reuse any existing gimp sessions.

The result is a (hopefully) seamless integration with The Gimp, The Finder and OSX. There are stilla few odd bugs to work out, but the launcher works quite well for me. With any luck, OS 10.4 willeliminate the need for this application altogether. Until then, this nasty hack is better thannothing.

Here's a shot of The Gimp Launcher in action:

NOTE: This software assumes that you have installed The Gimp using Fink and that the gimp executable lives in /sw/bin. As usual, this is GPL'd, I make no guarantees andwould love any feedback.